The so-called Weston load brake is a type well known for many years, and has been used in many industrial applications, such as heavy cranes, cable drum hoists, and others. Such brakes have been improved in many ways over many years time duration since their first inception. Ideal stability, chatter-free, and non-jamming performance, however, owing to various obscure and inadequately solved basic problems, has remained, despite scrutiny and extensive analytic study, an unattained goal in the art to the time of the present invention.
IN THE PAST, AMONG IMPROVEMENTS MADE IN THE ORIGINAL Weston type brakes, arrangements have been provided for feed-back of torque to the multiple disk brake responsively to output torque on the cable drum owing to load. Efforts have been made to use this feed-back to apply the brake to an extent equal to this feed-back. As mentioned in the preceding paragraph, however, the inherent problems in such a braking system have not been adequately solved, chattering operation still prevails, and basic objects of the invention are to find and understand these problems, and to provide practical solutions for them. The features had accomplishments of the present invention can best be understood and evaluated in the course of a detailed description of an illustrative embodiment of the invention, wherein the improvements accomplished by the invention are described or will appear.
For purpose of illustration, but without limitation, the invention will be described and illustrated in an adaptation to or combination with automatic braking of the cable drum of a drum and cable hoisting rig, carried for example by a helicopter.